Loneliness is a feminist issue

Loneliness is a feminist issue

Abstract

Loneliness is often described as a deadly epidemic sweeping across the population, a silent killer. Loneliness, we are told, is a social disease that must be cured. But what does it mean to think of loneliness as a feminist issue, and what might a specifically feminist theorisation bring to conceptualisations of loneliness? In this paper, I argue that feminism helps us see that loneliness is not just personal but political. I trace how stories of loneliness surface, circulate, shift and compound within the specificity of the present, centring on recent strategies proposed by the UK government in their 'national mission to end loneliness'. I outline how this policy discourse upholds certain normative attachments as having the promise to alleviate loneliness: coupled love, the family, community. Such framings serve to depoliticise contemporary conditions of loneliness, positioning loneliness as a personal failure, with the cure for loneliness as the responsibility of individuals and communities. Absent in government depictions of the problem of loneliness are the wider mechanisms that condemn people to lonely lives, when infrastructures fail, when people find themselves violently cut off from the world. Finally, I speculate on what might happen if we were to challenge this framing of loneliness as always and only a problem in need of a cure. I seek to uncover some of the political potentials of loneliness, asking what can be learnt through reflecting upon shared experiences of loneliness? For, as feminist politics has shown us, feelings of disaffection and alienation can help us imagine other worlds.

What does it mean to think of loneliness as a feminist issue, and what might a specifically feminist theorisation bring to contemporary conceptualisations of loneliness? In this paper, I propose that a feminist approach has more to offer than simply an examination of how women are affected by loneliness. Rather, feminism can help us trouble prevailing framings of loneliness: where loneliness is still so often equated with aloneness, and positioned as an individual feeling of lack and longing. This paper then, is a critical reading of how the problem of loneliness is framed and narrated, with a particular focus on recent strategies proposed by the UK government in their 'national mission to end loneliness'. I trace how stories of loneliness surface, circulate, shift and compound within the specificity of the present. Throughout, my focus is not on the who or the why of loneliness, but on the question of what does this discourse of loneliness do? How is the problem of loneliness framed, and what antidotes are offered as the cure?

Loneliness has increasingly dominated headlines and policy agendas, positioned as a deadly epidemic sweeping across the population. Michael Cobb has written of how we are continually warned 'that a menacing, debilitating feeling of loneliness lurks everywhere'. Loneliness is depicted as a crisis of the present. We live in an age where we must strive to never be lonely, for as Melissa Carroll notes, loneliness is positioned as the 'antithesis of happiness'. Loneliness, we are told, time and time again, is a social disease that must be cured. What follows, then, is an alternative reading of loneliness, one that seeks to trouble some of the dominant ways in which the problem of loneliness is framed and narrated.

How, for instance, does the emergence of the 'loneliness epidemic' fit within broader narratives around individualised responsibility, aspiration and the pursuit of happiness? What can existing work on the affective and psychic life of neoliberalism add to contemporary understandings of loneliness? While there is, of course, a long history of pathologised lonely subjects, more recently we have witnessed the emergence of a narrative where whole swathes of the population are positioned as potentially 'at risk' of loneliness. An atmosphere of anxious apprehension where we are continually told about the risk of loneliness, warned that our lives are getting lonelier than ever before. What work, then, does the language of 'the loneliness epidemic' do? My proposition is that the fear of loneliness holds a powerful grip, which directs us down particular paths, towards the false promise of a cure. Certain attachments, we are told, can mitigate the risk of loneliness: couples, the familial, community. Here, the cure for loneliness is an individualised solution; we must constantly work to avoid loneliness. Reaching out, striving for connection, trying to find ever-present closeness.

What, then, is missing from these dominant ways through which the problem of loneliness is framed, where loneliness is still so often positioned as an individual feeling rather than a structural condition of neoliberal life? What does the language of individualised responsibility and cure overlook? In the argument that follows, I question whether the creation of the seemingly common-sense notion of the 'loneliness epidemic' shuts down potential lines of thought, of ways of conceptualising loneliness otherwise. Foremost, this paper is an attempt to reframe loneliness as a structural condition, rather than as a personal failure or a failure of community. That is, to think of loneliness as a shared condition, as not just personal but political.

The tragic loner

Philip Koch has defined loneliness as 'the unpleasant feeling of longing for some kind of human interaction': loneliness arises when we feel there is a mismatch between the social connections we have and the social connections we desire. To feel lonely, then, is a subjective state, a sense that we are not sufficiently connected to others. Yet, while loneliness and aloneness are seen as conceptually separate, when 'the loneliest' are spoken of it is still predominantly a story about those who are alone. Numerous quantitative studies have attempted to determine who is at greatest risk of loneliness, with research highlighting that living alone and being single or separated increase our risk of loneliness. Yet the finding that those who live alone or without a partner are more likely to report feeling lonely is perhaps unsurprising in an age where coupledom and family life are still privileged as our most important social connections, and where a life alone is still so often portrayed as a failure to achieve the good life. Feelings of loneliness are not just personal - the lack we feel comes when we measure our lives against a dominant social ideal: against those who we presume are never lonely. It is crucial, then, to consider how individual feelings of loneliness form part of, and are shaped by, dominant social formations, or an emergent 'structure of feeling'. Feminist work on affective life has long highlighted that we cannot view feelings and emotional life as somehow existing beyond 'the structural', but rather we must examine their continual entwinement.

I propose that one of the first steps towards a feminist engagement with loneliness is to trouble popular conceptualisations that reduce loneliness to aloneness: to explore the construction of the figure of the 'tragic loner', and to examine how such depictions often uphold a narrow heteronormative vision of intimate life. Perhaps the most dominant lonely figure in our popular imaginaries is that of the bereaved widow/er, an individual whose presumed happy life with a partner has suddenly become a life alone. There is, of course, a much longer history of portraying those who live their lives alone as lonely, lacking and unfulfilled. Contemporary constructions of the lonely veer from positioning them as objects of pity, to subjects of fear. Loneliness can often be a dysphoric and painful feeling, as feelings of loneliness turn inwards, a sinking sense of failure at one's inability to connect to the world. Yet feelings of loneliness and disconnection can also turn outwards, accumulating in resentment, revenge, even violence. Think, for example, of how the figure of the 'incel' has been introduced into popular lexicon. Incels emerged within misogynistic online cultures, where outcast male teenage 'loners' began to label themselves as 'involuntary celibates' after resentfully being unable to find girlfriends. Here, feelings of loneliness are projected outwards. This violence and hatred has been directed most forcefully towards women, with talk of an 'incel uprising' and a 'war on women'. Compulsory coupledom and toxic masculinity combine, often with devastating consequences. Such extreme examples help shape our wider cultural imaginaries, a cautionary tale about what every male 'loner' might become, framing those who are lonely not just as sad and depressive, but also bitter and potentially violent.

So, while the figure of the 'incel' is one of the starkest examples of the 'dangerous loner', other constructions continue to position the lonely as social failures, odd, strange, possibly mad. We could, for example, turn to the contemporary construction of the 'crazy cat lady', a lonely tragic figure, whose presumed attempts at romance have failed. Here, narratives of the tragic loner combine with wider discourses around madness, ableism and heteronormativity. Thus, as Will McKeithen notes, we can think of the 'crazy cat lady' as existing on the 'queer periphery', her only company being an abundance of feline companions. Such constructions portray the lonely as social failures, their strangeness having resulted in their lonely existence. The figuration of the 'crazy cat lady' falls into a far longer history of abjection and stigma against women who live their lives without men, the pathologised figure of the spinster, the witch, the hag. Historically, women who live alone, without men, without children, fail to fit within heteronormative ideals of womanhood: where a woman can only find her place in the world through relation to her husband and her children.

This is not, however, to say that those who are alone are instantly classed as lonely; there are plenty of emergent positive representations of being single. A large body of feminist scholarship has started to tell a different story of women who live their lives outside of coupledom. Undoubtedly, there is a more diverse representation of both single life and those who live alone, highlighting how one can be alone but not lonely. Yet despite the growing recognition of single life, there is still often the anxious narrative that waiting too long to 'settle down' is to risk a potentially lonely existence. Popular representations of those who are happy alone often depict this as a temporary sojourn. So while single life may now be encouraged for certain periods of our lives, as part of a neoliberal life script where we 'find ourselves' before settling down, to wait too long is to risk missing out. Thus, as Anthea Taylor notes, despite the increasing acceptance and even celebration of single life for women, 'the spectre of the spinster looms large in the popular imaginary'. The loneliest figures in popular representations are still those who live their lives alone: single people, the unattached, those without families. Continued depictions of sad and perpetually lonely figures serve as a reminder to us all that we must seek to avoid chronic loneliness, that we should not ever be alone for too long.

Cultural constructions of loneliness are hence founded upon, and help found, heteronormative logics. Loneliness serves to orientate us; it directs us down a path that we are told will lead us away from a potentially lonely existence. In her work on queer orientations, Sara Ahmed notes how we are directed down the 'straight line', a collective alignment towards heteronormative visions of the good life: to coupledom, marriage, the nuclear family, and a presumed happily ever after. For, as Ahmed notes, 'following lines involves forms of investment. Such investments "promise" return (if we follow this line, then "this" or "that" will follow)". Yet the lines we take are not just shaped by the promise of happiness, but by the fear of loneliness. The fear of loneliness shapes and limits the paths that our lives can take. Certain attachments, we are told, contain the promise to alleviate loneliness; romantic coupled love is still positioned as the primary way to find meaningful connection. So even while feminist work on single life has reshaped some of these normative life scripts, the spectre of loneliness still haunts us. The melancholic figure of the 'tragic loner', living alone without a partner or family, is still upheld as the cruel fate that potentially awaits us if we do not follow the right path.

However, while there has been important sociological work on how one can live alone, or be single, and still feel connected to the world, far less attention has been given to how we can be surrounded by the presence of others yet still feel lonely. Here, we might want to return to feminist work on coupledom which has highlighted that one does not have to be alone to feel lonely. The most intense feelings of loneliness can sweep over us right at the very moment we are supposed to feel connected to others. Think, for example, of the stereotype of the unhappy and isolated suburban housewife. Surrounded by her family, living the life she is told will bring her happiness and fulfilment, yet still she is met with a profound sense of lack and isolation. The path has been followed, but the promise of return has failed. This sense of listless longing is what Betty Friedan described as 'the problem that has no name'. Thus, as Ahmed notes, Friedan 'taught us that proximity to the fantasy of the good life does not mean proximity to happiness'. More recently, feminist scholars have written about the disconnect between the normative promise of happiness and the lives we so often find ourselves living, when the promise of the good life falls short, when we feel alone despite being in the presence of others. Yet this aspect of loneliness is eclipsed in contemporary depictions, and the dominant trope is one where loneliness is equated with aloneness.